The Trials and Tribulations of Luxury-Condo Renting

The Website for CASA, a rental building on 21st Street in Chelsea, presents it as “a new concept fusing the lavish and the leisure,” which apparently means a “spa-inspired European marble bath,” along with the stainless-steel appliances and custom closets. What it doesn’t include — even at $6,000 per month for a two-bedroom, reportedly — is the right to actually live in thebuilding.

See, as Curbed reported this morning, the building has Certificates of Occupancy from 1935 and 1972 — the latter from when it was a parking lot — but nothing saying the site was fit for human habitation. A little more digging by Curbed readers, meanwhile, revealed that the Department of Buildings Website shows 36 outstanding items and five objections that must be addressed before a C of O can be granted. That’s on top of the complaint that the building itself is illegal because, oops, there’s no C ofO.

How’d Curbed learn about this? An angry broker — whose client had a lease for October 1 but hasn’t been able to move in — e-mailed the site. And you thought broker’s fees were worthless: It’s not like just anybody can e-mail someblog.